Developing banking union’s common supervisory culture: a look into the ‘black box’ of joint supervisory teams

ABSTRACT The accomplishment of the Banking Union’s common supervisory culture or the implementation of consistent supervisory practices and standards across participating Member States, critically depends on the cooperation of national competent authorities throughout the supervisory process, which takes place primarily in Joint Supervisory Teams (JSTs). Because of their mixed, multilevel composition, JSTs allow the cross-comparison of varying national supervisory approaches and facilitate the identification of best practices as building blocks of a shared supervisory outlook on prudential concerns. This paper unpacks the ‘black box’ of JSTs through the lens of experimentalist governance and with a qualitative examination of data from various sources, including semi-structured interviews with JST-participants. It reveals the importance of NCAs in JSTs experimentalist practice as well as of soft governance tools in fostering a sense of community and highlights specific operational challenges in close cooperation that limit the reach of the common supervisory culture beyond the euro area.